Word Finder - empirical

definition

Pertaining to or based on experience.

definition

Pertaining to, derived from, or testable by observations made using the physical senses or using instruments which extend the senses.

definition

(philosophy of science) Verifiable by means of scientific experimentation.

Thus we acquire a bodyof empirical generalizations as to social phenomena, and then we connect the generalizations with the positive theory of human nature.

The declared aim of the author 1 was to offer a complete solution of the great mechanical problem presented by the solar system, and to bring theory to coincide so closely with observation that empirical equations should no longer find a place in astronomical tables.

Although our information respecting the chemical composition of petroleum has been almost entirely gained since the middle of the 18th century, a considerable amount of empirical knowledge of the substance was possessed by chemists at an earlier date, and there was much speculation as to its origin.

The smallest empirical formula for cellulose (q.v.) may certainly be written C6H1005.

His method was empirical, and the laws which he established were generally the result of repeated experiment.

But the starting-point of the argument in question is the purely empirical evidence of a single fact or set of facts; it proceeds by way of analogy, not of strict demonstration; and it claims for its results nothing more than probability.

Augustine was the first who ventured to teach that the catholic church, in its empirical form, was the kingdom of Christ, that the millennial kingdom had commenced with the appearing of Christ, and was;therefore an accomplished fact.

Anything short of this is merely descriptive and empirical, and affords no rational basis for inquiry into the mode in which the distribution of plant-life has been brought about.

Although establishing certain general relations between atomic and molecular refractions, the results were somewhat vitiated by the inadequacy of the empirical function which he employed, since it was by no means a constant which depended only on the actual composition of the substance and was independent of its physical condition.

This plan of treatment is termed empirical.

Montpellier became distinguished for the practical and empirical spirit of its medicine, as contrasted with the dogmatic and scholastic teaching of Paris and other universities.

He presented abstract concepts with empirical data.

We may therefore conclude that the molecular volume depends more upon the internal structure of the molecule than its empirical content.

The isomerism which occurs as soon as the molecule contains a few carbon atoms renders any classification based on empirical molecular formulae somewhat ineffective; on the other hand, a scheme based on molecular structure would involve more detail than it is here possible to give.

Their necessity was discovered and proved in a manner which might be called empirical.

So long as bridge building was an empirical art, great waste of material was unavoidable.

Such, in substance, is Hume's restatement of Locke's empirical view.

In reasserting and amplifying the empirical conclusions of his predecessors, especially in the sphere of ethics, Mill's chief function was the introduction of the humanist element.

But this empirical tendency as regards science never modified his metaphysical outlook.

Waddell (De Pontibus) gives the following convenient empirical relations.

Three acids of this empirical formula are known, viz.

This study gives us the science of empirical psychology, or, as it is now termed, psychology sans phrase.

For empirical phenomenal knowledge, however, which is all that man can look for, materialism with its exact scientific methods has done most valuable service.

By the method of empirical psychology, he examined man first as a unit in himself and secondly in his wider relations to the larger units of society and the universe of mankind.

But Leibnitz also anticipated Kant in seeking to correct the empirical point of view of the English philosophers.

By sceptics the word " dogma " is generally used contemptuously, for an opinion grounded not upon evidence but upon assertion; and this attitude is so far justified from the purely empirical standpoint that theological dogmas deal with subjects which, by their very nature, are not susceptible of demonstration by the methods of physical science.

First there is a medical usage - empirical versus dogmatic medicine.

These antinomies are four - two mathematical, two dynamical - connected with (I) the limitation of the universe in respect of space and time, (2) the theory that the whole consists of indivisible atoms (whereas, in fact, none such exist), (3) the problem of freedom in relation to universal causality, (4) the existence of a universal being - about each of which pure reason contradicts the empirical, as thesis and antithesis.

There was no repugnance to the idea on the queen's part, but Sir Robert Peel thought unfavourably of it as an "empirical" plan, and the question of expense was always mooted as a serious consideration.

Bailey can hardly be classed as belonging either to the strictly empirical or to the idealist school, but his general tendency is towards the former.

But all agree in giving the central place to the realization of a real effective kingship of Yahweh; in fact the conception of the religious subject as the nation of Israel, with a national organization under Yahweh as king, is common to the whole Old Testament, and connects prophecy proper with the so-called Messianic psalms and similar passages which speak of the religious relations of the Hebrew commonwealth, the religious meaning of national institutions, and so necessarily contain ideal elements reaching beyond the empirical present.

In this theory there can strictly be no "causation"; one thing is observed to succeed another, but observations cannot assert that it is "caused" by that thing; it is post hoc, but not propter hoc. The idea of necessary connexion is a purely mental idea, an a priori conception, in which observation of empirical data takes no part; empiricism in ethics likewise does away with the idea of the absolute authority of the moral law as conceived by the intuitionalists.

Hence the modern sense of empirical as applied to the guess work of an untrained quack or charlatan.

Riehl, who in Der philosophische Kriti .cis- mus (1876, &c.) proposes the non-Kantian hypothesis that, though things in themselves are unknowable through reason alone, they are knowable by empirical intuition, and therefore also by empirical thought starting from intuition.

Avenarius (q.v.) is the hypothesis of the inseparability of subject and object, or, to use his own phraseology, of ego and environment, in purely empirical, or a posteriori form.

Not, says Wundt, by association, as Hume said, but by thinking; not, however, by a priori thinking, as Kant said, but by logical thinking, by applying the logical principle of ground and consequent (which Leibnitz had called the principle of sufficient reason) as a causal law to empirical appearances.

Now, Wundt is aware that this is not always possible, for he holds that the logical principle of ground belongs generally to the connexion of thoughts, the causal law to the combination of empirical appearances.

Nevertheless he believes that, when we can apply measures to the combination of empirical appearances, then we can apply the logical principle as causal law to this combination, and say that one appearance is the cause of another, thus adding a notion of causality not contained in the actual observations, but specializing the general notion of causality.

More generally, philosophic rationalism is opposed to empirical theories of knowledge, inasmuch as it regards all true knowledge as deriving deductively from fundamental elementary concepts.

A priori concepts there are, but if they are to lead to the amplification of knowledge, they must be brought into relation with empirical data.

In the Treatise of Human Nature, which is in every respect the most complete exposition of Hume's philosophical conception, we have the first thorough-going attempt to apply the fundamental principles of Locke's empirical psychology to the construction of a theory of knowledge, and, as a natural consequence, the first systematic criticism of the chief metaphysical notions from this point of view.

In certain of the later writings, pre-eminently in the Dialogues on Natural Religion, Hume brings the result of his speculative criticism to bear upon the problems of current theological discussion, and gives in their regard, as previously with respect to general philosophy, the final word of the empirical theory in its earlier form.

In order to make perfectly clear the full significance of the principle which Hume applied to the solution of the chief philosophical questions, it is necessary to render somewhat more precise and complete the statement of the psychological view Theory which lies at the foundation of the empirical theory, and to distinguish from it the problem of the theory of knowledge upon which it was brought to bear.

This solution presupposes a peculiar conception of the general relation between the mind and things which in itself requires justification, and which, so far at least as the empirical theory was developed by Locke and his successors, could not be obtained from psychological analysis.

With regard to geometry, he holds emphatically that it is an empirical doctrine, a science founded on observation of concrete facts.

Hume's theory of mathematics - the only one, perhaps, which is compatible with his fundamental principle of psychology - is a practical condemnation of his empirical theory of perception.

It is because Kant alone perceived the full significance of the change required in order to meet the difficulties of the empirical theory that we regard his system as the only sequel to that of Hume.

So far as metaphysic is concerned, Hume has given the final word of the empirical school, and all additions, whether from the specifically psychological side or from the general history of human culture, are subordinate in character, and affect in no way the nature of his results.

If he could get potent drugs to cure disease he was content, and he worked very hard in an empirical way to make them.

The principles which govern the preparation and setting of the other class of calcium sulphate cements, that is, cements of the Keene class, are not fully understood, but there is a fair amount of knowledge on the subject, both empirical and scientific. The essential difference between the setting of Keene's cement and that of plaster of Paris is that the former takes place much more slowly, occupying hours instead of minutes, and the considerable heating and expansion which characterize the setting of plaster of Paris are much less marked.